The Jim Jacobs Story

Written
by
Dick Martin
on December 19, 2007 Contributors: Tony Thacker, Dave Enmark, Jim Jacobs, Steve Shaw CollectionsEven In High School, Jacobs Had The Entrepreneurial Spirit. His Passion Was Model As. He Not Only Knew About Them, He Knew Where To Find Them.

1/20Jacobs was into 8 1/2-inch-wide wheels and tires (all around), which made steering his Model A pickup a bit of a strain for the Corvair box. He engineered a power-assisted steering system using a stock '58 Chevy power-steering pump/generator unit, which included mounting the Chevy ram to a draglink of his own design. He fabricated and welded a bracket on the frame and, voil, power steering in a street rod. Nothing new, you say? But, wait-this was in 1966.

"I was being introduced to Isky (Ed Iskenderian) as 'Jake of Pete & Jake's' at a local gearhead function," began Jim "Jake" Jacobs. "Isky asked me, 'Are you the welder or the one behind the desk?' I took 'welder' to mean the one in the shop."

Isky's inquiring mind has a way of cutting to the chase, while Jake is known for telling it like it is. Without hesitating, Jacobs replied, "I'm the welder."

Jacobs was a key figure in the design and fabrication of street rod suspension components for 12 years-truly a mover and a shaker in the industry. His knowledge and creativity made him a true Renaissance man in the field. "Jake brought the talent to Pete and Jake's and did the engineering," said Blair's Speed Shop alumnus Eric "Real Wheels" Vaughn, who subcontracted the machining for Pete & Jake's. "He prototyped the parts and was the main guy who figured out how to make that stuff."

Ultimately, Jacobs' innovative suspension designs became a lightning rod for countless imitations. He recalled the time when a copycat competitor told its customer to call him with an installation question; the competitor had copied the Pete & Jake's part, but couldn't answer the consumer's technical question. "I was tired of designing parts for the competition," Jacobs declared. "I was no longer passionate about the business, and if I'm not passionate, I'm not creative."

2/20

Jacobs' desire to continue the equal partnership, which began in 1974, slowly ebbed to the point when he called it quits. Jerry Slover purchased the company in 1986.

Jacobs had a life before Pete & Jake's Hot Rod Repair, and after. This is about that life.

Former R&C publisher and creator of Stroker McGurk, Tom Medley coined the phrase "Street is Neat" during the first Nats. Medley might have been referring to Jim Jacobs, because Jacobs drove the bejesus out of hot rods he built for the street. "It's always been about having fun with cars as far as I'm concerned," Jacobs said. Gone is the Grizzly Adams beard. Gray rules the roost up top, but "Jitney Jake" still dons his hillbilly hat on occasion and isn't above a brodie or two. Jacobs' passion for old tin is as strong as ever.

A lot of rodders are following Jacobs back in time as well, with traditional street rods making a comeback. He, however, has never strayed. He loves 'banger motors and Flatheads as well as small-blocks. He builds his own frames rather than buy one. The only trailer Jacobs concerns himself with is the one that follows his '34 sedan to Death Valley with camping gear.

3/20

Jacobs has operated in a time warp ever since he sat in a '29 Model A woodie as a kid in front of Jake and George's 5 & 10 on Compton Boulevard-not a dime store, but a car lot in which his dad was a partner. Buyers could drive off by plunking either $5 or $10 down on a used car.

Jacobs was born in 1945 and grew up in Compton, California, which was the mecca for hot rods and customs. He was just a bike ride away from Art, Lloyd, and Jack Chrisman's garage, and not far were the Barris Brothers. He would stand behind a rope to watch the masters as they created those Kustom City eye poppers.

Father Knows Best"One man's trash is another man's treasure," were words by which Jacobs' father, Garrett, made a living. On more than one occasion, a metal commercial building in the area was slated to be demolished to make way for new construction. It was free for the taking. The task was left up to Jacobs and his brother, Gene, to take the dilapidated structure apart, bolt by corroded bolt (which they recycled), after school; later, the pieces were moved to a new location. The brothers reassembled the building, which their father rented out.

4/20Jacobs painted his high school pickup in a dirt lot (which he watered to keep the dust down) next to his house in Compton.

His parents, while not poor, were frugal. His father had invested wisely in real estate, while owning a number of businesses. At one point, Mr. Jacobs owned the Hesperia Airport in the High Desert, yet he was not above holding a menial job at a local dairy to provide for his family as a milk bottle washer.

Travelin' ManWhen his mom wanted to return to Iowa to visit her sisters for the summer, Jacobs offered to drive her in his Model A pickup he bought for $200. Back in 1968, street rods were something one took to the local drive-in or to a car show, but from California to Iowa? Never! However, Jacobs' mom was an adventurer, having come to California from Iowa in a Model T in 1929. Besides, he had installed a modern Chevy engine (the 283 was a freebie), so Mrs. Jacobs thought nothing about riding 1,800 miles to the Hawkeye State in her son's rod, and packed sandwiches for the trip.

5/20"I wanted a set of slicks so bad. I had steel rims and bald tires that I found behind a gas station. I wanted fancy wheels and slicks," Jacobs recalled. "My dad said, 'You're on your own,' so I got a job at the Shell station.

"I was at an Early Times [formed in 1965 with the late Bill Booth being member number one; Jim is number two] meeting in 1968 when I overheard Jake mentioning he was going to drive his mom to Iowa in his truck. He was going to turn around and come home," said Mark "Hop Up" Morton. "I was going to college at the time, and talkin' macho with no money to do it, but I told him I'd ride back with him. My sister bought me a plane ticket to Sioux Falls, South Dakota. When we pulled out of the airport, Jim looked at me and asked, 'Which way do you want to go?' I just pointed to my right. We drove half a day before we realized we were going north. Jim said that maybe we should kinda go west.

"We ate chicken fried steak in little country towns all across the Western United States for a buck and a quarter a plate," Morton continued. "I spent two weeks coming home in that cracker box truck. That's what got me interested in touring. That's why I'm obsessed with it now."

6/20

Touring ThackerExpat Brit Tony Thacker, the executive director of the Wally Parks NHRA Motorsports Museum, also knows Jacobs' lust for hitting the road. "When I moved to America in 1988, I stayed at Jake's house in Temple City for approximately a year," Thacker said. "It was like living with a movie star. Everybody knew him. Every weekend we would jump in the tub and go somewhere. We'd get up Saturday morning and go to Pie 'n' Burger for breakfast and figure out where we wanted to go. Whether we went up the coast, or to the desert to meet Jocko Johnson, it was a cool introduction to the inner circle of hot rodding."

P-Wood Heads East"Jake was a fun guy to travel with on cross-country trips heading to the NSRA Nationals," began Pete Eastwood. "Jake was always the lead car. We'd get up at 5 a.m. and have our cars rolling by 6. By the time we stopped at 7:30 a.m. for breakfast, we'd have 100 miles behind us. We covered about 400 or 500 miles a day.

7/20Why was the staff at R&C thrilled to get their hands on such a prolific car builder as Jitney Jake? This may provide some insight: "The Early Times guys were invited to the L.A. Roadster Roundups if they had roadsters. I had built a camper for my closed-cab truck.

"Jake had a great nose for travel adventure," Eastwood continued. "We'd be going through the Midwest and he'd pick old two-lane highways. We'd pull into some burg about lunchtime. Jake would peel down some little side street and park his car. We'd all follow and he'd jog over in front of some little diner. He'd always pick the ones that had pickup trucks parked in front. We had the best lunches. We'd get back on the two-lane and stop at all kinds of goofy novelty museums. We'd be at the motel by 4 p.m., in the pool by 4:30 p.m., and having a steak dinner at 6 p.m.

"At about 7 p.m., all the street rodders we spent the night before with would be straggling in. They'd been grinding down the interstate all day. You know, a 10-car gas stop turns into an hour, then they have to pee," laughed Eastwood. "Our gas stops would last about eight minutes because we had fun stuff to do. Joe Mayall (NSRA editorial director) would call us the wild bunch."

8/20

Good Guys"I met Jake and a bunch of his friends at an Early Times picnic held at the Compton Rod and Gun Club," began former R&C editor Bud Bryan. "There were so many great guys in the group that I started to hang out with them. That's where I first met Pete Eastwood, Jerry Olds, and Jim 'Brass Radiator' Babbs. They accepted me in the group; I was at Rod & Custom at the time. The thing I liked about the group was that it didn't seem to matter who I was, or where I was coming from. I felt comfortable around them. Bellflower used to have such big backyards. We used to have hot rod backyard parties and park our cars under the avocado trees, mostly Early Times guys. Jake was always there. We'd talk about the cars, look at them, and take pictures of the cars. It was a culture, a bunch of good guys."

9/20

A Little Off The TopChopping a top was almost a lost art when Jacobs chopped his three-window. "I called a shop to get a price on chopping the top," he explained. "When they gave me a price, I thought, 'I don't have that kind of money, I'll just do it myself. I can learn to do this.' There wasn't much to go on. I just used my own common sense."

"I recognized in Jake a real talent and creativity where he was cutting and welding metal," Bryan said. "There was a real drive there! I went over to Jake's house and he told me the top was coming off tonight. He had cut the top with a hacksaw. I held the tape and he was measuring it for the first time. It was dead-nuts on. You know when you cut anything with a hacksaw how the cut wavers? Not his. We sat the top on and it was perfect."

Work at R&C?"I asked Jake if he ever thought about writing about this stuff," Bryan continued. "We were looking for someone who knew what they were looking at." The timing couldn't have been better for Bryan to pose the question. What frosted Jacobs was the number of times, while reading a street rod feature, he saw information he knew was inaccurate. Jacobs entered the world of automotive journalism as an associate editor with R&C in 1970, and his knowledge overshadowed any shortcomings he may have had with the written word as far as Bryan and publisher Tom Medley were concerned.

10/20Motel, schmotel. Who needs one when you can camp under the stars?

"He wrote good captions," Bryan said. "We had tech sheets with all the information on a specific car. Jake knew how to put that entire wording together without it being chunky."

"Bud would have me in his office on every car feature he wrote and he'd hand me a photo," Jacobs said. "He'd ask me, 'What do you see?' [I'd say,] 'That's a Deuce axle, those are '40 spindles, and those are '48 brakes.' I could recognize that stuff. And Bud would go, 'OK.' The tech sheet the car owner filled out might be totally different, but Bud trusted my accuracy."

Still GoingJacobs was inducted into Darryl Starbird's National Rod & Custom Hall of Fame Museum in 2002. His name was added to the list of other inductees like George Barris, Bill Hines, Dean Jeffries, and his late great boss, Ed Roth. Jacobs could've flown to Tulsa and rented a car to receive the honor-but not Jake. He drove solo in his '29 panel from his home in Apple Valley, California, to Afton, Oklahoma, for the occasion.

Jacobs is an anomaly for a guy so well known. He's on the A-list of many high-profile industry functions, yet he'd much rather scrounge through an obscure swap meet, hang out at El Mirage, or have dinner on Fridays with a bunch of regular Joes.

Like his parents, Jacobs lives frugally, but he invested shrewdly in real estate. Nevertheless, he still builds cars for himself and for friends.

Jim Jacobs is an unpretentious, roll-up-window kind of guy who's as innovative as Stroker, and artistic as Tom Medley. Why, Jim Jacobs is Stroker. The light bulb still goes on upstairs and the Heliarc is close by. The passion has returned. What's Jake got up his sleeve this time? I'll never tell.

11/20

The DoorsThe frame belonged to a '34 five-window coupe that Dan Woods (wearing the hat) and Jake were tearing apart. Sheldon Bardin (holding the wheel) and Johnny Sitz (with the cutting torch) added their expertise. Jacobs, looking like he was about to perform a juggling act, had some real juggling to do shortly after this photo was taken in '74. The doors against the wall came up missing.

"I had to find replacement doors in a hurry," laughed Jacobs. "Somewhere I found another really nice donor '34 body and got the doors off of it."

End of the story, you say? Remember, this is Jitney Jake, so try to keep up. "I was building my yellow coupe at the time and the front half of my roof had damage, so the body that I got for the doors became a donor for the front half of my roof. Besides, in the chopping process, my roof had to grow in its length, so I took the front half of the roof off of the donor car, cut it a little bit longer, and put it on my car," Jacobs explained. "Now I had this really nice body with no doors and the front half of the roof was gone after I was done with it. Some guy from Pasadena called me up and said, 'I've got a '34 five-window coupe body here, and you can have it if you come and get it.' I went and got it ... and it was chopped! It had been a racer with a real nice chop job and great doors, but the whole bottom half was junk. I sold off the two bodies, which were used to make one chopped five-window.

"The chopped top off of the race car body was put on the good body with the doors, which ended up belonging to Skip (Lokar Performance Products) Walls."

All because the doors came up missing.

12/20

"When I was looking for a likely candidate for the Stroker McGurk Award at the '87 Goodguys event in Pleasanton," said Tom Medley, "I was distracted by a commotion. I was out looking around at the cars when I saw a big crowd on the grass. 'What the hell's going on here,' I thought. Here was Jake, Pete Eastwood, and a bunch of guys, and they're painting Jake's rusty old tub with brushes. Those guys were having a ball. When I was ready to present the award to Jake, four or five beautiful cars had passed through to loud applause when here comes Jake driving the tub in front of the grandstands. He had his cowboy hat on; all of a sudden the place got silent-they were in shock! I began, 'You missed the whole point folks. Here's a guy that built a car in a couple of weeks. He came up here by himself, had a flat tire on the Ridge, and walked until he found a tire at a construction site. Not only that, he's going to drive this thing to Bonneville. You don't have to have a lot of money and spend a zillion dollars to have fun.' After that, the crowd gave Jake a round of applause."

13/20

"Jake and I were walking through Pasadena and saw a guy with a guitar case with labels plastered all over it," recalled Tony Thacker. "Jake said he always wanted to do that with the tub. [Gray Baskerville called it "Jakeoupage"] I said, 'Let's go do it.' We went home and started cutting up old Hot Rod magazines and put them on the tub. At lot of people were upset by that, but it just makes the issues that are left more valuable!"